Jump to content

Water is too dark and horrible


Recommended Posts

15 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

I just don't understand why people keep insisting water can't look dark?  Water can look like anything - dark or bright, blue or green or black etc...  all depends on lighting. 

 

Screenshot_20210524-144356_Gallery.jpg

 

Which is not the case. Water is looking black in all conditions. SEA WATER IS BLUE, NOT BLACK. It's like you guys believe in flat Earth too... this is crazy lol 
If you guys don't know what sea water look like maybe you can do a research on google images, youtube videos, deep web.. or you know... maybe just go to a beach. lol 😃 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Most of the visuals (especially the water) that changed took a step backwards in my opinion in 2.7. The new clouds are amazing for sure and something for ED to REALLY be proud of. But, and I know things aren't this simple, I would've voted for keeping the visuals, water, lighting, etc. from 2.5.6... and merely introducing the new clouds into how things looked before. I'm kind of weary of the gamma getting jacked up higher and higher with each new update.

 

My honest first impression of 2.7 was not about the clouds, but about how bad the gamma looked, introducing a sort of reddish, washed out hue to everything. If one brings the gamma any lower (I'm a 1.8 guy), the outside world in 2.7 starts to look a little better, but the cockpits become ridiculous.

 

I keep a Stable version loaded on my SSD and when I flip back from 2.7 to 2.5.6, the latter looks quite a bit better...especially the water.


Edited by wilbur81
  • Like 1

i7 8700K @ Stock - Win10 64 - 32 RAM - RTX 3080 12gb OC - 55 inch 4k Display

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Fabiano-VIKING said:

Water is looking black in all conditions. SEA WATER IS BLUE

 

🙂 Only under a blue sky. Under full clouds, it’ll be shades of grey, etc. But the sim’s water is now darker than it used to be.

  • Like 1

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU1...CR6IZ7crfdZxDg

 

_____

Win 10 Pro x64, ASUS Z97 Pro MoBo, Intel i7-4790K, EVGA GTX 970 4GB, HyperX Savage 32GB, Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB SSD, 2x Seagate Hybrid Drive 2TB Raid 0.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree and I am very surprised to see that there are people here arguing that the water looks better now than it did before. The ocean looks like a giant, stagnant pond. No whitecaps visible at altitude even if you crank the wind way up... Also the ocean is way too reflective near the horizon. Looking at the real ocean, the water usually appears matte at a distance, not like a giant mirror. 

 

2.7 visuals look much better overall, except for this one aspect, in my opinion. 

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, Fabiano-VIKING said:

SEA WATER IS BLUE, NOT BLACK.

I'm gonna guess you've seen a glass of water before.  How blue was it? 

 

Water isn't really any color.  What it is, is reflective and varying degrees of transparent.  Thus, the color you see when looking at it is fully dependent on what it's reflecting, and to a lesser extent, how deep it is, how clear it is and what's at the bottom.  That picture I posted IS sea water, for instance.  I've seen a bit of it; I only live next to it, dive in it, and have spent a career flying over it 😉

 

Is the current DCS water a little too dark in full sun, mid-afternoon on the Persian Gulf?  Yeah, probably a little. 

 

Is it more realistic looking than the cartoonish tropical look we had in the Gulf pre-2.7?  Yeah, a lot.  That was ridiculous.  The Gulf is not Fiji.  Ask anyone who's been.  😉  (Please note that this does not mean you cannot find a photo on the internet of the Gulf looking blue; as stated above, any water can look almost any color depending on lighting.  The question is whether that look would be the norm, especially to the uniform tropical extent we used to have.)

 

What I definitely agree with is that the waves have been toned down too much.  I'm in the habit of pumping the wind to at least 10-15kts on all my Liberation-generated missions, just to get some definition to the sea. 

 

I also find the water too clear; you can see the boat's screws and keel far too easily now.  And as far as I'm concerned, they can make the water purple if they want as long as they give us a realistic wake lol.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

I'm gonna guess you've seen a glass of water before.  How blue was it? 

 

Water isn't really any color.  What it is, is reflective and varying degrees of transparent.  Thus, the color you see when looking at it is fully dependent on what it's reflecting, and to a lesser extent, how deep it is, how clear it is and what's at the bottom.  That picture I posted IS sea water, for instance.  I've seen a bit of it; I only live next to it, dive in it, and have spent a career flying over it 😉

 

Is the current DCS water a little too dark in full sun, mid-afternoon on the Persian Gulf?  Yeah, probably a little. 

 

Is it more realistic looking than the cartoonish tropical look we had in the Gulf pre-2.7?  Yeah, a lot.  That was ridiculous.  The Gulf is not Fiji.  Ask anyone who's been.  😉  (Please note that this does not mean you cannot find a photo on the internet of the Gulf looking blue; as stated above, any water can look almost any color depending on lighting.  The question is whether that look would be the norm, especially to the uniform tropical extent we used to have.)

 

What I definitely agree with is that the waves have been toned down too much.  I'm in the habit of pumping the wind to at least 10-15kts on all my Liberation-generated missions, just to get some definition to the sea. 

 

I also find the water too clear; you can see the boat's screws and keel far too easily now.  And as far as I'm concerned, they can make the water purple if they want as long as they give us a realistic wake lol.

I think that the worst thing about the water in 2.7 is the fact that, arguably, it looks worse than 2.5.6... but comes at a higher FPS cost. "If it ain't broken..."


Edited by wilbur81
  • Like 3

i7 8700K @ Stock - Win10 64 - 32 RAM - RTX 3080 12gb OC - 55 inch 4k Display

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Stearmandriver said:

I'm gonna guess you've seen a glass of water before.  How blue was it? 

 

Water isn't really any color.  What it is, is reflective and varying degrees of transparent.  Thus, the color you see when looking at it is fully dependent on what it's reflecting, and to a lesser extent, how deep it is, how clear it is and what's at the bottom.  That picture I posted IS sea water, for instance.  I've seen a bit of it; I only live next to it, dive in it, and have spent a career flying over it 😉

 

Is the current DCS water a little too dark in full sun, mid-afternoon on the Persian Gulf?  Yeah, probably a little. 

 

Is it more realistic looking than the cartoonish tropical look we had in the Gulf pre-2.7?  Yeah, a lot.  That was ridiculous.  The Gulf is not Fiji.  Ask anyone who's been.  😉  (Please note that this does not mean you cannot find a photo on the internet of the Gulf looking blue; as stated above, any water can look almost any color depending on lighting.  The question is whether that look would be the norm, especially to the uniform tropical extent we used to have.)

 

What I definitely agree with is that the waves have been toned down too much.  I'm in the habit of pumping the wind to at least 10-15kts on all my Liberation-generated missions, just to get some definition to the sea. 

 

I also find the water too clear; you can see the boat's screws and keel far too easily now.  And as far as I'm concerned, they can make the water purple if they want as long as they give us a realistic wake lol.


Yes, because a glass of water is exactly identical to an ocean. Even the waves are the same! When I want to swim I don't go to the beach, I just dive into a glass of water. 😉

By the way... the waters in the Gulf map look VERY turkish blue near the land and then suddently get black. "Super realistic". 

And no, the ocean is not blue because of the reflection of the blue sky. The big mass of water together makes it look blue. If it was the reflection the small ponds would also be crystal blue, and not brownish (due to sand, dust and mud). And the ponds do reflect. 

As I said before, sometimes the water looks like oil spill... and that is not for every user of DCS. For some people it's VERY dark and blackish, for some people it's darker but not so much.. so again, for people who are not seeing it so dark, you may just ignore this topic. This might be a problem that needs a fix. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting read: Ocean Color | Science Mission Directorate--NASA.gov

 

And a few images from the Persian Gulf:

 

westernArabianSea.jpg

 

GulfOfOman.jpg

 

And one from the eastern Black Sea:

 

EasternBlackSea.jpg

  • Like 1

YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU1...CR6IZ7crfdZxDg

 

_____

Win 10 Pro x64, ASUS Z97 Pro MoBo, Intel i7-4790K, EVGA GTX 970 4GB, HyperX Savage 32GB, Samsung 850 EVO 250 GB SSD, 2x Seagate Hybrid Drive 2TB Raid 0.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To illustrate reflections, here's one of those terrible muddy ponds..  😉

 

This is a weird discussion.  The ocean can be most any color, again dependent on water clarity, depth, bottom composition, and lighting/reflections.  I mean, come do a wreck dive in Puget Sound or the Strait of Juan de Fuca with me and see how blue it is.  (Spoiler - it's very not blue.)

 

About the only appearance the middle of the Persian Gulf shouldn't be able to have is the cartoony tropical look it had before... that requires clear water and a shallow, coral-sand bottom. 

363116905.jpg

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 4/20/2021 at 1:42 AM, kreisch said:

Never ever take photos as an example of "That's how the color" shall loke like - my recommendation as a photographer for 10 years.

Every foto runs through at least 1 process of color "correction" which is overdone most of the time, because "vivid photos please the most people".

The second picture in the post above is a great example, that's very, very vivid - no water will look like that in reality, it's over saturated.

Even a GoPro is most of the time a better source than pictures if you refer to lights and colors.

Oh, I never take the picture's color as given; I've been there, seen that (taken the pictures), got the sea service ribbon to prove it, and I have seen the ocean that over saturated.  On a grey day the ocean is dark blue, on a sunny day it's bright blue, in the middle of the north pacific in 40' waves on the way to Petropavlovsk  it's still blue, but more of a grey blue.  Pictures do NOT do blue water justice; you just have to see it to appreciate it.

 

12 (*cough*) miles off the coast of Kamchatka it's greener; at least that was the color of the water breaking over the bows of that Soviet patrol boat and drenching the poor sods manning the forward 40mm gun mount.  At least until our CO politely-ish asked them to turn off their fire control radar.  (They picked up our garbage, and we made sure to put in some...entertainment when we tossed ours, but my wife has since told me the officers would have kept all that...things are different on that side of the curtain).

 

I can't argue too much with color; particularly near any coast.  Off Hvar and along the Dalmation coast the water is crystal clear, off California it's kind of green, off Virginia it's just icky.  In the Indian Ocean you can see the bottom (no, not really).  It's the reflectivity that gets to me.  I've only seen the ocean reflect like that a couple times.  At 40,000 with the sun shining it's close, but there's always chop and rarely are there never any whitecaps at all when you're down low. 

 

I've had to use radalt to figure out how far I am from the water, which needs some tweaking.  Not convinced I've ever been near a large land mass and there was no wind, leaving no whitecaps...

 

Better than 2.5?  Oh, yeah.  Work in progress, though.  They'll get there eventually, or I'll just keep using radalt...as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean.

30 minutes ago, Stearmandriver said:

 

Here's another aerial of the entire Gulf, for reference.  Not exactly Hawaii...

 

 

Ugh.  The gulf.  120 degree wind blows off the desert and hits 90+ degree water.  No wonder the people who live there are cranky.

 

Not exactly Hawaii, where at least the breeze is refreshing.

 

Seriously, depth and content of the water is everything.  The gulf is a bathtub, and full of all kinds of sediments and nastiness.  Hawaii is a sea mount, and all you get is ocean water flowing freely all around.  This is why the ocean is less clear anywhere near a large land mass (other than Croatia, apparently).

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites



1 - Again, the problem here is that water is looking like OIL SPILL. It has a BLACK color in ANY weather conditions. This is not correct. 

Again [2], this is the link where I saved some screenshots from old and new DCS's water. You may want to take a quick look 😃
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1PYTrRg4q8Aoe6_tTCQN4ZSGnQJonkY-Y?usp=sharing

I also found this cool youtube video that you guys might wanna check out. 😃
 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

If any of you have flown over very silty inland lakes or rivers (many places around New Orleans are good examples), they are quite dark, almost as dark as DCS 2.7 oceans. However, open ocean just does not look like that during the day.

Water does partially (not solely; see silty water) take its color from what it's reflecting. That's true. During the day, the ocean is reflecting a very bright blue sky or white clouds. That's why it looks blue, not black, from above. It may be grayish on a cloudy day. But it won't be dark. If you swim in the ocean you may find it's actually green!

At sunset, as the sky above you darkens, the water will darken as well, and only the far sides of waves which reflect the low sun in the distance will be bright. That's quite beautiful.

Unfortunately, 2.7 water is just dark period.


Edited by Jester2138
  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

indeed it looks very dark like oil

  • Like 1

FC3 | UH-1 | Mi-8 | A-10C II | F/A-18 | Ka-50 III | F-14 | F-16 | AH-64 Mi-24 | F-5 | F-15E| F-4| Tornado

Persian Gulf | Nevada | Syria | NS-430 | Supercarrier // Wishlist: CH-53 | UH-60

 

Youtube

MS FFB2 - TM Warthog - CH Pro Pedals - Trackir 5

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Try this - open water.fx with Notepad++ (DCS World OpenBeta\Bazar\shaders\enlight) and goto line 343 and change it to:

 

float deepFactor = calcWaterDeepFactor(water_depth, -0.3);

 

this will drastically change the water transparency - one thing to bear in mind, it does not suit the Caucasus Sea map as it's too clear for that body of water and looks wrong, this edit is best for PG and Syria maps.

 

 

Screen_210530_200114.png

Screen_210529_214839.png


Edited by Mustang
  • Like 2
  • Thanks 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you are not fully satiefied with the water color (or other shades in DCS) you might as well try Reshade for DCS. I use it myself without any performance hits and it can be tweaked to your convenience.

 

https://forums.eagle.ru/topic/218629-dcs-world-and-reshade

 

Reshade download and highly recommende shader by prod80

 

Easy to use, does no harm to your installation, easy to uninstall, can be tweaked while DCS is running (SP/MP), multiple "presets" possible and can be switched off completely if you want to run vanilla DCS. What I like most with prod80´s shaders is that you can easily tune alot of them for example to the "sky temperature" - so just one setting affects others according to the degree of cloud coverage.

There was a cool tutorial on youtube but I can´t find the link anymore

 

Below my Preset using prod80´s shader files

Willy

DCS_Real Reshade Preset.ini


Edited by docWilly
  • Like 2

[sIGPIC][/sIGPIC]my rig specs: i7-4790K CPU 4.50GHz, 32GB RAM, 64bit WIN10, NVidia GeForce GTX 980 Ti, SSD+

 

A10C, UH-1H, M2C, F5E, Gazelle, KA 50, F18C, DCS 2.5x OB

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/1/2021 at 5:12 AM, Blindman said:

Seems pretty dark here

 

 

mil F-35s land on Italian ship 1800x1200.jpg

 


1) That is a picture of an overcast day. Water is much darker when overcast than when sunny. In DCS water is still dark when sunny.

2) That is still brighter than DCS sunny water.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Exclusive VR user here,

 

Its not that i don't like the new water as I see some improvements but there are a few things that are off right now, i will do my best to explain what i see:

  • Water reflect the clouds too much, or better said it seems that clouds and the sky is reflecting on the water at times where they don't normally do (like when late in the afternoon where you should only see the sun). On top of that, the reflection is not "more or les static" but instead is changing hues and colors a bit; I mean when you see the sky not changing lighting conditions, like the if the sky reflected on water is taken from a Disney movie. Definetely needs tuning...
  • Something is off regarding clarity or height perception, don't know what it is but since 2.7, I had 2 crashes on water i haven't had for ages in 2.5.6 because i couldn't discern how close i was to the water until it was to late... Maybe it has to do with how small waves are now, but even low level fliying is quite difficult for me on water. The height perception improves looking 90 degrees left or right but not if i'm looking straight ahead at the HUD. I really don't know what it is....
  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Everything improved masssively with the new update, I love the clouds with the jitters gone and the new explosions and smoke effects and everything - but why the hell does the water look so incredibly ugly now? It used to look awesome before 2.7 and now it´s just a glassy black mirror with almost none existant surface effects no matter which graphic options set.

Could some of the devs please state if this is intentional now or WIP or what, I would LOVE to have the awesome looking water back from before 2.7, really don´t get why there has to be such downgrade.

  • Like 4

I7 8700K 3.7 GHz 32GB RAM NVIDIA RTX 3080 Rift S

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/2/2021 at 9:23 PM, falcon_120 said:

Something is off regarding clarity or height perception, don't know what it is but since 2.7, I had 2 crashes on water i haven't had for ages in 2.5.6 because i couldn't discern how close i was to the water until it was to late... Maybe it has to do with how small waves are now, but even low level fliying is quite difficult for me on water. The height perception improves looking 90 degrees left or right but not if i'm looking straight ahead at the HUD. I really don't know what it is....

This may actually be more realistic than before.  Everyone I've ever talked to who's had to ditch an aircraft in the open ocean talks about the difficulty / impossibility of judging height above water for the flare; it's why many manufacturers' ditching checklists contain guidance to only flare slightly before touchdown.  They're trying to avoid a full stall / drop in touchdown from a higher-than-realized height. 

 

There have been many accidents resulting from tactical aircrews' inability to accurately judge height above water.  In one famous incident, a crew "skipped" an A-6 off the water and returned to base (this aircraft was plagued with mechanical issues for the rest of its days and ultimately became the subject of Peter Hunt's "The Lost Intruder" following an ejection west of Whidbey).

 

Point is, yeah it's annoying from a game perspective, but real-world occurrences seem to indicate we shouldn't be able to easily visually judge height above water from very low level. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...